CoronaSDK and SublimeText2 Build System

I’ve recently been trying out different editors as I can see the end of the road for TextMate from where I’m sitting. I really wanted to be super-awesome and finally learn vi or emacs, but despite several attempts, my brain hasn’t really latched onto them like it did when TM came onto the scene.

Now there’s SublimeText 2 (in beta) which is starting to be the editor that TM wanted to be when it grew up. There’s still a lot of funky things with it, but I can see the potential. Not to mention it’s cross platform like the ancient gods vi and emacs. I suppose that’s really just icing on the cake because I rarely leave my home platform for reasons other than duress (Windows) or curiosity (Linux).

The one thing I really missed from TM was the ability to launch the CoronaSDK simulator from the editor. It’s fantastic to be able to edit a file and hit a button and have it fire up the simulator and then start reloading the simulator each time the file changes. (actually the simulator does that work for you) I took a look at the Corona bundle for TM and found quite a few lines of AppleScript that are doing the work (i kid not).

By setting the working_dir to the project folder and specifying ‘main.lua’ as the file, you can launch the simulator for a project no matter what file you happen to be looking at (or in what subfolder).

Save the file as “CoronaSDK.sublime-build”

Go to your Corona project

Open a file to edit

Select Tools > Build System > CoronaSDK

Press Command-B

profit!

For Reference, custom build system files are usually stored in the following locations:

But, with both I have the same trouble : with +B, a new instance of the simulator is launched, I can’t just get an update to the simulator (like in textmate), it eventually leads totons of simulator opened and it’s just unusable.